Left Brno around 11am. We took the shorter but windy road to Uherske Hradiste, then up into the White Carpathian mountains, crossing the border pass and then down into Slovakia through some valleys with scattered cottages that could have been from a fairy-tale. Then we drove into the valley of the river Váh towards the spa town of Piešt’any on the banks of the river Váh, where the Open Slovak Rowing Championships would be held.

One has to understand that Slovakia is a proud but small rowing country. There are 5 clubs in total, but about 8 Czech clubs and one Austrian club were participating as well.

A view of the race course in Piešt’any

Each of us did a brief 30 minute row and then we were off to the hotel, which turned out to be a lovely place with great food, great wine and a garden terrace to dine. Also they gave us bicycles, on which we could bridge the 4km between the hotel and the race venue by a very pleasant bike ride along the lake.

Saturday

A day full of races. First to go was our daughter Lenka who had to be third or better in her single to qualify for the final on Sunday. When I took her picture at the 500m point she was in fourth place but she managed to secure a place in the final.

I took the picture from the 500m because our son Dominik was already waiting for the start. Here he is in lane 2, at the moment of the start:

I wanted to cycle next to him on the bicycle, but after 10m the chain fell off, so I had to spend a minute to put it back on, then chase him on the bumpy path. The chain came off one more time, so I saw Dominik finish third only from the distance. Here is a picture of our bronze winner:

Then it was time for a quick lunch. At 13:55, the Masters quad was on the program. We had to wait for the 4- to finish (they came in 3rd place) to rig the boat with the quad riggers. A warming up run, and on the water.

The quad race was a 2 boat affair. Bratislava, the third contender, had withdrawn. They wanted to save energy between the 4- and the 8+ race. We had two guys in our quad who had already rowed the 4-, and so had our opponent, the local club Piešt’any. We were out of the starting block head to head with them. In the first 500m they managed to stay about half a length behind us, but then they started to fall behind.

My first Slovakian title. We each got a small “gold” medal and a bottle of “Schauma for grey hair” shampoo:

Two hours later we were launching the eight. We were up against Piešt’any proper in their best boat, against Bratislava who had withdrawn from the quad race to save energy for the eight, and us. In exchange for a liter of home-made Slivovice we were allowed to borrow their worse eight and two of their Masters rowers who hadn’t qualified for their proper eight.

We took our Junior sculler as a cox. He is taller than I and has a bit more than 55kg.

Of course the race organisers had put us in the slower lane 1, with less tailwind and less current.

Out of the starting blocks we were half a length behind and drifting into lane 2. We were almost clashing oars with Piešt’any when our cox finally managed to turn the boat. We got our stroke together in lane 1 proper and started to make some gains. I was in bow seat, and we were one man behind Piešt’any who were leading. Bratislava was half a boat length behind us.

Apparently the cox called three strong 10s during the race but I couldn’t hear anything. We were driving from one end of the lane to the other. I later heard that the rudder was almost impossible to control.

At the 500m mark we managed to pass Piešt’any and clear a boat length. With 250m to go we were a boat length and a bit in the lead but in lane 3, Bratislava was suddenly making quick gains.

We pulled hard for another 25 strokes. The cox managed to not park our eight in the bank and we managed to pass the finish line a second before Bratislava. The eight, our least expected win.

The Piešt’any crew took their loss very sportly. They accused their men who had rowed with us of not having fulfilled their secret mission to slow us down. Who knows … In the end they invited us for a beer, which became two beers.

Then we all cycled back to the hotel and had a great dinner in the garden.

More meetings in Brussels. At 3pm, my old friend Arjan picked me up and we drove to Eindhoven, through rainstorms.

When we arrived at ERV Beatrix, my old club, the rain and wind had disappeared. The Eindhovens Kanaal was quiet as always. We took the club double that we always used to row in, adjusted the footstretchers and off we went.

We hadn’t rowed together in 7 years. The secret plan is to start in the C category at the Masters Worlds. First 2km warming up and drills. Then 4×12 minutes “L4” style:

I guess the short summary is more useful:
dist_____|time_____|_pace___|_HR__|_SPM__|_DPS|comment
4020_____|_17:05____|_2:07.5|125|19.7|12.0|warmup
7813_____|_37:04____|_2:22.3|152|19.3|10.9|Main set
2481_____|_15:01____|_3:01.6|136|20.8|7.9|Cool down
3453_____|_22:49____|_3:18.2|144|19.1|7.8|rest meters
17767____|_31:59____|_2:35.3|144|18.6|10.4|_Total

It was good fun. Arjan remarked that he was feeling the zen of rowing again, so that made me happy. We discussed technique a lot and were working really hard and concentrated to get our strokes together.

What worked: We managed to get a nice swelling stroke and make the boat run. Arjan managed to time the finish better with me.

What didn’t work: We didn’t stick to the prescribed stroke rates. Instead, they tended to drift up by 1 or 2 spm. Sloppy tap-downs were not solved successfully. He didn’t pay me 1200 EURO for a successful rowing clinic. May not become a rich freelance rowing trainer. 🙂

What I would do differently next time: Nothing I can think of now!

I was scared by how narrow the Eindhovens Kanaal is. I guess I have really become a lake dweller:

A sculler on the Eindhovens Kanaal

Then we drove to his home in Weert, picked up some Chinese take away for dinner (another traditional thing that we used to do in our student days) and ended up spending a nice evening with his family.

Noisy GPS data because I had left the XGPS160 at home.

Thursday

Took the 6:29 train to Amsterdam.

No rowing training but something that may come in useful in rowing as well. For a change I can write about my business trip. This day I was in a coaching training at Honeywell in Amsterdam. The training was given by Inside Out, and it was excellent. Their founder is a tennis coach, and the guy who was training us was a qualified ski coach. So of course I chatted with him about coaching and self coaching in sports. It was very energizing.

A very simple thing that works is to write down after each session what worked, what didn’t work and what you would do differently next time. May try to implement it in my blogs.

At the end of the day I took the 8pm flight to Vienna and the take off from Amsterdam was great. The weather was very clear and beautiful, the plane flew right over the area where I grew up and of course with my seat nr 6A I had a fantastic view of Amsterdam, Diemen, Weesp, Naarden, the IJmeer, Gooimeer, IJsselmeer, all the way up to the Noord Holland and the Wadden Sea. An unexpected present.

The week started quite interestingly. At least it made me produce some nice paces in today’s workout:

But back to the story. On Sunday evening, after we had finished watching a film on DVD, I made the mistake to check my email. I shouldn’t have done that. Why do I make the same mistake over and over?

There was an email about next week, telling me the club had signed me up for
– Masters Single
– Open category quad
– Open category eight

Damn! Looking at the program the open quad is less than 2 hours before my single race. I cannot do a full out 2k, then a full out 1k in the single a few hours later. Also, my idea of the weekend was to enjoy watching the races. Do the masters quad on Saturday, the master single on Sunday, but mainly watch my children race. Now I would be zipping up and down the race course trying to be in time for the start and I would miss all the youth action.

I did send out a few quite bitchy emails.

Things got worse.

I am usually a bit grumpy getting up at 5:30 to row at 6, but this time I was really in a foul mood. Seeing the mist on the lake didn’t really help, but at least the water would be perfectly flat.

It was even to be worse.

Arriving at the rowing club, I noticed a text message from my double partner that he was sick. The message was sent at 5:30, but my phone is on night mode so I didn’t register the message.

With my single already prepared for transport (because I will be out on business travel for the rest of the week), I had nothing to row on and would be stuck to the erg.

Eda arrived and I started discussing how he could have put me in a Men’s quad and eight without even consulting me.

Turns out it was supposed to be a Masters quad and a Masters eight, both rowed on Saturday, while my single race is on Sunday. Today they will correct the registration.

He also allowed me to row in his single Liduška, so all was good. This single is built for 95kg, so a little big, but with the flat water it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

It was really low visibility today. Rowing on the Albano, I could see 5 buoys behind me, so that is 50m, not more. In the middle of the lake I couldn’t see any of the banks. Just rowing in white milk. There was no other traffic on the lake at this early hour, and the double and I decided to row the same workout next to each other to avoid any collisions.

The workout was 20 strokes “on”, 20 strokes “off”.

In the first half, from Rokle to Sirka, I kept the stroke rate “low” (30-31spm) and tried to work on sending the boat. I think that worked out pretty well. The double was slightly faster than I but in the 20 strokes they never gained more than 1 boat length. I used the 20 stroke breaks to get back next to them.

Turning, and some rest. Now, I thought, they will let the dogs out.

And they did. But I had positioned myself half a boat length ahead of them and was able to counter their 36-37spm bursts, first doing my own 34spm, but as the end of the workout was nearing I had to go up.

I did see 40spm on CrewNerd. And I did see a consistent 10 stroke interval of 1:44s. Happy with that. I think I had to work harder than the double but I was able to match their speed. A good training to rate up.

No detailed statistics today. We were rowing this on stroke count rather than on time and I don’t know how to get that from CrewNerd.

We are rowing the Slovak Championships, next week in Piestany, Slovakia. It may turn out to be an interesting regatta, with participants from the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and of course Slovakia.

It has all categories in one weekend, from 12 year olds rowing a 500m to Elite, to Masters rowing a 1km.

This lovely Spa town will be the site of my son Dominik’s first rowing race. He is taking the preparation very seriously. He is just a beginner in the single, but now he refuses to take a single light stroke during his trainings.

Let’s hope the weather will allow him to row at all.

Here are some pictures from yesterday’s training.

As you can see it needs a few more kilometers, but the most important thing now is that he is thoroughly enjoying it.